Almost Wasted
by Blue Eyes At Night
Summary: One Shot of Tonks and Remus's feelings when he left her...and when he came back Complete. RR


A/N- how many fics have I abandoned in favor of these one shots?? Im such a bad fic author…

Lyrics are Carrie Underwood "Wasted"

**Almost Wasted**

**By Blue Eyes At Night aka Cara**

_Standing at the back door _

_She tried to make it fast _

_One tear hit the hard wood _

_It fell like broken glass _

_She said sometimes love slips away _

_And you just can't get it back _

_Let's face it_

Dora was at her mother's house. She missed her own cottage, isolated in the middle of the woods where a werewolf would have to go very far away to get to humans. It was dumb, but she missed her eclectic collection of mugs and Remus' dour grey throw rugs…

Remus.

She clenched her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut. Strained her face until she thought her skin would rip but a tear still escaped. All her morphing was useless when it came to tear ducts…she couldn't just will them to disappear. It seemed like everyone in the world saw that tear, pointed at her, and scolded her for crying. But how was she going to stop?

_Kick. Kick. KICK. _

"Stop it, love." Tonks sniffed her nose and wiped her eyes on her sleeves, patting her belly in a scold. It was just getting big, and the baby had just started kicking. It seemed that now that it had discovered kicking it intended to kick a hole in her.

The baby. Inside her she felt her love for it rise up like a wave and envelope her. Dora thought this was the best thing that ever happened to her, bar none… she couldn't help but wonder if this was why Remus left. He'd been getting broody, progressively more so since they got married. His face fell tragically when she told him she was pregnant before he faked happiness for her sake. She had swallowed the lie then, happy to pretend it was true. Happy to pretend he was just overwhelmed and having trouble adjusting…

She still tried to make that true. Remus hadn't really said much to her about his reasons. He'd returned to an old favorite excuse, that he was truly too dangerous for her. He barely mentioned the baby, but she assumed he was including the baby in that danger, probably more so then he was including her.

Her wedding ring glowed against the fading sunlight as Dora leaned against the doorframe, staring into a garden that wasn't hers. The ring was taunting her, daring her to take it off. Tonks wanted to keep her ring on, that was just the answer to that question….but _should_ she keep it on? Shouldn't she realize that Remus wasn't likely coming back? That it was her and her little kicker from now on? Shouldn't she?

Probably. But she couldn't.

It should seem like such a waste, to love him as she loved him only to have her heart broken again… but it didn't. It didn't feel good but she couldn't regret a moment. Not a second, not even the pain. After all, it only hurt so much because she had been so happy…it wouldn't have hurt if she'd been miserable and she was happy that her marriage wasn't a misery. Maybe a mystery, but she just assumed love was always a mystery to some degree.

She knocked her forehead lightly against the wooden frame, "Stop it…just stop it, Dora."

Taking a deep breath she put her arms around her belly, "It's time to face it… your love is gone, and you can't look back."

Dora squeezed her eyes as tight as they would go…but she couldn't stop the tears from hitting the floor.

_For one split second _

_She almost turned around _

_But that would be like pouring rain drops_

_Back into a cloud _

_So she took another step and said _

_I see the way out and I'm gonna take it_

She grabbed the doorframe, clenched it until her fingers dented the wood and she was jammed with splinters. Her knuckles were white and she stormed into her room, wand out, packing her suitcase to go home. Home, the real one, the one she had with Remus. In the same motion she packed the case she flung her wand screaming, "NO!" and the contents of the case flew disorderly about the room.

Sinking to the floor she stared at her stomach. Inside was a tiny life, growing steadily everyday. Remus had helped her make it, even if they hadn't consciously done it. There was nothing that could un-do the progress of her child towards birth, towards life…and there was nothing she could do to repair her marriage. She couldn't go back into the past and beat sense into her husband, she couldn't un-do his leaving…it wasn't her deed to un-do. The only thing she had was the future, was moving forward.

Dora shook off the last of her tears, and steeled herself for the progression.

_Another glass of whisky but it still don't kill the pain _

_So he stumbles to the sink and pours it down the drain _

_He said it's time to be a man and stop living for yesterday_

_Gotta face it_

Remus was trying to burn Harry's words out of his skull. First by flinging Harry against the wall…second by testing how Fire Whiskey lived up to its name. Shot after shot he pushed back and it changed nothing, just made him more and more aware of how much he hated the whole situation. In the dank hotel room he was in he tossed the rest of the bottle into the sink…what was the use?

What was there to do?

_Fix it_. A voice in his head, that may have been the conscience he recently ignored, chimed.

He didn't know how to fix it. That's a lie…it couldn't be fixed, but he could try to help the healing. He could at least try. Tell Dora that he left her because he was terrified to ruin the baby's life…that he thought living with her would ease his own isolation from the world, not contribute to her isolation from it. He wanted to tell her that his presence wouldn't…couldn't…stop the baby from being born like him. That he was truly afraid of seeing the darkest, most evil part of himself reflected in the mirror of his newborn's eyes…but that the reflection would be there whether or not he was there to look at it.

Remus wanted to believe that running away could fix it, but it was a childish belief. Like thinking he could hide behind his hands and no one could see him. Belief in the notion didn't make it true… he could shade his eyes from his life all he wanted, but he couldn't hide from it.

And wasn't he finally _living_?? He had a young, beautiful wife that adored him! That gave him back the youth he missed more then anything else… weren't they having a baby? Hadn't he always wanted to be a father? Sometime, when he was young and hadn't considered the genetics of it, hadn't he wanted children? Isn't that why he taught?

He didn't want to admit that Harry was right… but he needed to stop hiding behind his hands…and his whiskey. Time to grow up and surrender his pride to the woman whom he would surrender anything to. Time to offer her his deepest, most sincere apologies…even at the risk that she'd reject him.

_Oh I don't wanna keep on wishing, missing _

_The still of the morning, the color of the night _

_I ain't spending no more time _

_Wasted _

_She kept drivin' along _

_Till the moon and the sun were floating side-by-side _

_He looked in the mirror and his eyes were clear _

_For the first time in a while, hey yeah _

Dora sat in her room, brushing her hair…even though she preferred it short, sometimes one just needed the monotonous task of brushing their hair. In that routine, there is a kind of therapy no one could ever bottle. How many nights was she going to spend in the tiny room she'd grown up in, brushing her hair at the same beauty table she'd been sitting in since she was a child?

_How long until you get up and get out yourself?_ She berated herself for the millionth time.

Outside was just somewhere she didn't want to go, and she always found an excuse. Too windy, too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet… too empty. She and Remus had always been outdoors, they liked it so much. They'd take walks before tea, and at sunset. Sometimes at dawn they'd go outside, wrapped in their sheets and their sweat, and watch the sun rise while the rest of the world was still sleeping. Times like that, Dora was sure the world would stand still for them, surrender to the awesome force that they were.

And nighttime? She couldn't go outside at night. Too chilly, too dark. Truthfully? Too dull. It seemed like someone turned down the saturation of the nighttime. Everyone thought that night was black, dotted with the odd spots of stars…not Dora. The night had its own pallet that was just as vibrant as the day. It was steam from hot chocolate turned scarlet from the glow of a fire…it was the deep twinkle that candlelight gave someone's eyes…

It was the rose-silver hue of moonlight on skin that darkened if you blushed… the white sheen of his scars as they gleamed like beacons, begging her to heal them. Hadn't their nights been so bright? How could she possibly face a dull night now? Didn't she have a pregnancy to keep on schedule? She couldn't be bothered by drudging up what she couldn't have, that's why she didn't go outside…

Why did it feel like the memories got drudged up anyway?

Her head was in a cloud, a million miles outside of her bedroom. She hadn't heard him enter the room. He sat on the bed, watching her brush her hair in a powerful daze. Remus let his eyes comb over every inch of her, picking at what was different. Her face was thinner, and her belly bigger. She seemed paler and her hair was brown and limp…longer too. Suddenly the hand that had been mechanically brushing her hair stopped.

He looked in the mirror, catching the reflection of her eyes and holding her gaze…she was staring at him, trying to figure out if she dreamed him up.

Turning slowly, as though if he were a dream he would evaporate if she moved too fast, Dora rotated until they faced each other. This had to be one of her dreams…he was here, smiling, almost glowing with a look of punch-drunk happiness as he took her in. He seemed calm, gentle…like he'd been when they first got married.

She was afraid he was there…but more afraid he wasn't. Reaching out she touched his hand….solid flesh.

He was really there.

Remus gave a small laugh as she poked his hand, testing him to see if he was some figment of her imagination…or maybe testing to see if he'd bite. Either way it was funny…he'd come all the way back to her, docile as a lamb, and she was poking him like some funny ingredient in Potions.

The astonishment on her face turned to pain, all the blood returned to her head and brought her painful memories with it. She stood and wanted to leave but he grabbed her hand in both of his and fell to his knees.

"Please listen…I don't deserve it, but I truly want you to listen to me."

Her voice broke as she said, "I shouldn't."

Remus nodded, "You shouldn't. You should turn your back on me like I did to you…But you're a better person then me, Dora, please give me a moment to try and explain."

She sucked in a breath and raised her nose, as though she was preparing to smell something terrible. She thought she was bracing for bullshit, she was surprised at what she got.

"There are two sides to every coin, and all good comes with some bad…and out of the two of us only you accepted that. I wanted everything bad to go away, I thought you were the cure for that. When I realized you weren't only the cure, but that I was bringing no small amount of my badness into your life I panicked… I panicked just with you. The baby… the baby was something so wonderful, so pure and innocent. I couldn't live with myself thinking that my blood in it's veins could condemn it to a life I despised… I wasn't prepared to harm you, much less a child. My own child."

He bowed his head before her, as though she had a hidden axe and he was offering his neck, "It was foolish to think as I did and…cowardly to act as I acted. I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I want to –" 

She dropped to her knees and kissed him, cutting off anything else. Remus held his wife too him like a lifeline, clinging to the best part of his life and wondering why he'd ever left in the first place.

They broke apart, smiling like fools.

Dora felt the baby kick and quickly put Remus' hand on her stomach so he could feel.

"I can't believe you almost wasted this time together." She quietly admonished him.

"Almost?" Remus was astounded at the kicking, the active confirmation of life from his unborn child, that he felt he'd wasted too much time. How was he to catch up?

Dora rubbed her nose against his and kissed him lightly, "Almost."

Ah…now he remembered how to catch up.

_Fin_.

A/N- review? There's a lot in here, emotion-wise, that's very true to myself… I feel a bit odd posting it as im rarely that honest with myself about my feelings.


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